Your Heart Is the Size of your Fist

A Doctor Reflects on Ten Years at A Refugee Clinic

Your Heart is the Size of Your Fist draws readers into the complicated, poignant, and often-overlooked daily happenings of a busy urban medical clinic for refugees. An Iraqi journalist whose son has been murdered develops post-traumatic stress disorder and mourns his loss of vocation. A Congolese woman refuses antiretroviral treatment for her new HIV diagnosis, and instead places her trust in Jesus. Two conservative Muslim Iraqi women are inadvertently exposed to pornography when a doctor uses Google Images to supplement a medical discussion. By turns humorous, distressing, and moving, these stories offer insight into the people seeking a new life in Canada while navigating poverty, language barriers, and Canadian neighbours who aren't always friendly. This collection is filled with hope and humour, and is a deeply moving portrait of how one doctor attempts to provide quality care and advocacy for patients while remaining culturally sensitive, even as she wrestles with guilt, awareness of her own privilege, and vicarious trauma. In the spirit of Louise Aronson and Atul Gawande, Scholtens' writing explores the transformative moments in which a clinical doctor-patient relationship becomes a profound human-human connection.